WAM! is a people-powered independent nonprofit dedicated to building a robust, effective, inclusive movement for gender justice in media.

Our Mission

There are over 3.3 billion women living in the world today. Yet if you judge solely by the mainstream media you might conclude those 3.3 billion people are less intelligent, less articulate, less funny, have less to say about issues (even those directly affecting them) or perhaps only make up 5 to 30% of the population. Of course, none of that is true. What is true is that women have fewer opportunities to contribute to conversations, because they are less likely to own media, be asked for their opinion regardless of their qualifications, be published, or be given the chance to tell their story.

At Women, Action and the Media (WAM!) we're out to change that. We are an independent, non-profit organization building a robust, effective, inclusive movement for gender justice in the media. We are also a strong, growing community of people engaged with media, learning and sharing capacity and skills needed to build a media ecosystem that represents the diversity of our lives and stories.

Why do we WAM!? Because power and privilege is about who gets to speak and who is listened to. Most of the time, it’s not women.

“Usually, you meet people who are important to your career casually, at work, or behind closed doors. But WAM! is this amazing, open space where anyone who needs to make important connections can make them, and women especially need to make important connections to further their careers.”

— Ann Friedman, freelance journalist, columnist for New York magazine, and co-host of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend.

Our core values

WAM! believes that institutions can only be changed when pressure is applied from the inside and from the outside.

WAM! believes that social change can be fun, and encourages creative, positive, inclusive action.

WAM! welcomes the next generation of leaders now, while integrating the lessons of previous generations.

WAM! is concerned with all kinds of media, including news, opinion-making, social networks, film, theater, television, music, video games, and more.

WAM! constantly seeks to remove barriers to entry. All individuals aligned with our mission & vision are welcome and encouraged to participate.

the team

Agunda Okeyo is a writer, producer, filmmaker and activist born in Nairobi and raised between New York City and the Kenyan capital. She has called New York City home for more than 20 years and proudly considers herself a Pan-African New Yorker. Okeyo understands and writes from a global perspective about race, gender, politics, culture, film, and comedy. She is published with Salon, The Daily Beast, Indiewire’s Women and Hollywood blog, For Harriet, Urban Cusp, Okay Africa, NBC and Women’s Media Center (WMC) founded by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, among others. A panoramic awareness has shaped her professional experience with organizations such as Duara Foundation, Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, Re:Gender and Cultural Survival. She is lauded for her ongoing production at Caroline’s on Broadway called Sisters of Comedy. It is the only all black women showcase at any of the top comedy clubs in NYC. She has also produced comedy shows at Ginny’s Supper Club and Gotham Comedy Club. In February 2016, Okeyo produced a benefit show to support an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the U.S. Constitution to better assure gender equality. The star studded event was hosted by Jane Fonda and featured Gloria Steinem, Sarah Jones, Judah Friedlander, Wyatt Cenac and Sasheer Zamata. Okeyo has been featured as a rising producer and activist in Time Out New York, The New Yorker, Essence, The Root, Black Enterprise, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, NBC and The New York Times. In 2016 She was named a Progressive Women’s Voices fellow with Women’s Media Center. Follow her on Twitter @AgundaOkeyo.

Caitlin Boston is a UX researcher with extensive experience in digital strategy, branding, and campaign messaging. Her breadth of work includes brands and clients such as Nike, Jordan brand, the White House, Brown University, UPS, NYU, Cartoon Network, Google, and Etsy. Before working in tech, Caitlin spent six years working as a labor activist across the country for AFSCME, NYSNA, and the Freelancers Union. As a writer she’s been published by Racialicious and The Toast. In her free time, she makes illustrated gifs and rides her bike in a way that some people have described as “alarming.” Follow her on Twitter @caitlinMboston.

Kamala Kelkar is a tenacious journalist who has traversed India, Alaska and both U.S. coasts during the last decade, reporting on stories that will break your heart and also inspire you. Her latest work as a reporter for PBS NewsHour Weekend’s digital team has connected slavery in the 1800s with the Electoral College system and explained how it developed into today’s forced prison labor industry. Before joining PBS, Kelkar covered everything from the bride trafficking trade in India to the dubious use of brain scans as arbiters in American death penalty cases. She has written and produced for The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, The Wall Street Journal, KQED, PRI’s The World, Vice and many other outlets. She received her bachelor’s in journalism from San Francisco State University, her master’s in science and public health reporting from Columbia University and has trained as a climate change reporter through Deutsche Welle in Chennai. Follow her on Twitter @kkelkar.

Melanie Breault is the Communications Associate at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), a membership organization of New York City non-profit neighborhood housing groups whose mission is to ensure flourishing neighborhoods and decent, affordable housing for all New Yorkers. Melanie is also the Web Editor and Social Media Specialist for Sandi Klein’s Conversations with Creative Women, a weekly podcast that captures the fire and energy, humor, heart, soul and impact of the female creative experience. In her free time, Melanie is involved with the Planners Network, an association of progressive urban planning. Her work has been published on sites such as TheNation.com, Mic.com, and Rewire, and she lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Clarkson and several other fellow WAM!ers. Follow her on Twitter @mbreaul1.

Renée Feltz is an award-winning investigative journalist who has covered immigration and criminal justice for 15 years, most recently for Rewire,The Guardianand the daily TV-radio newshour Democracy Now!, where she is a correspondent and was a senior producer. As a 2010 Soros Justice media fellow she co-produced DeportationNation.org with Stokely Baksh. The two first worked together on the Webby-nominated BusinessofDetention.com. Renée also reported with The New York Times investigative unit on a Pulitzer Prize-nominated series about the 2008 financial meltdown, and was a multimedia producer for PBS Wide Angle. Her cover story for The Texas Observer about how Texas used junk science to execute mentally retarded prisoners, supported by The Nation Investigative Fund, was a 2010 IRE finalist. She honed her skills muckraking on deadline as news director for Pacifica radio station KPFT-FM in Houston, Texas from 2002-2006, where she interviewed more than 20 men and women on death row, covered Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and trained and managed hundreds of community reporters. Renée is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and an adjunct journalism lecturer at CUNY-Brooklyn College. Follow her on Twitter @reneefeltz.

Stephanie Russell-Kraft is a freelance reporter focused on the intersections of religion, law and gender, with bylines at The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Nation, The Progressive, New York Magazine, The Hill, Rewire, Vice, AlterNet, Refinery 29, Fusion, Jezebel, and Religion Dispatches, among others. She is also a regular contributing reporter for Bloomberg Law. Russell-Kraft became a full-time journalist after earning a master’s in cultural anthropology from Humboldt University in Berlin, cutting her teeth as a legal reporter for Law360. She’s also a French and German translator for various news sites, including The Huffington Post. In 2016, she was the recipient of a U.S.-Austria Journalism Exchange Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists, publishing several articles in German for Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Follow her on Twitter @srussellkraft.